Stories from George Washington's Ferry Farm and Historic Kenmore

Malaga

Ah, the humble wine bottle. There are few historical archaeological sites without them and Ferry Farm is no exception. Our current mending project has produced about a dozen wine bottles from one Washington house cellar feature alone. Readily identifiable because their form has changed little in the past 250 years, these beauties are sometimes overlooked in favor of fancier or more exotic artifacts. However, there is much we can learn from the sherds of wine bottles and much history wrapped up in their existence on colonial sites.

Mid-18th century bottle neck and base fragments excavated from the Washington house cellar at Ferry Farm.

Let’s start with what wine bottles cannot tell us. They can’t actually tell us whether or not folks were drinking wine. Huh? Well, ‘wine’ bottles of the colonial period held anything from vinegar to gin and all liquids in between. Yes, many contained wine but the modern use of ‘wine’ to describe these bottles, with their tall, cylindrical shape and dark green-colored glass, is really just a reflection of what we exclusively drink from them currently.

Most 18th and 19th century wine bottles held a variety of substances over their lifetimes. Bottles were not cheap before industrialization made them relatively disposable and were often listed in probate inventories. Recycling is nothing new. Your average 18th century household carefully cleaned out each empty bottle for reuse when needed. The inside was scoured with sand, small pebbles, or lead shot (which is a terrible idea). It is not uncommon to find wine bottles archaeologically that exhibit heavy use wear on the inside and outside from years of being drained, cleaned, refilled and used for storage, serving, and transport. Truly, the wine bottle was a workhorse.

An example of what the bottles excavated at Ferry Farm looked when they were whole.

Where did these ever-present bottles come from? For the most part, from England. This isn’t surprising given that colonials weren’t really allowed to trade with any other countries. While there were some early glass houses in the Americas, their production was nowhere near that of England’s well-established glass industry. The English produced squat and sturdy wine bottles of very dark glass often dubbed ‘black glass’ able to survive shipping across the Atlantic. They were filled before the trip and used as ballast in the ship, the contents often being worth more than the bottle itself.

For the most part, these ‘black glass’ wine bottles were filled with wine but not the wine that you’re likely familiar with. Your typical red or white wine would not survive the months-long tumultuous ocean journey (with its extremes of temperature and humidity) from Europe to America. It would be vinegar by the time it arrived, if you were lucky.

However, wine fortified with a hard liquor such as brandy would halt fermentation and oxidation processes and make the wine both transportable AND much higher octane once it arrived for thirsty colonials. Subsequently, a lot of the wine enjoyed in 18th century America was fortified. Not only did these fortified wines such as Madeira, port, sherry, Masala, or Malaga survive the nasty voyage across the ocean, they actually tasted better once they reached their destination. Fortified wines are total masochists and basically thrive under neglect and abuse. The more rocking of the boat the better. Fortified wines also love extremes of temperature and humidity. In fact, bottlers often documented the voyage a particular wine took. Madeira and Port that traveled south of the equator and then back north again fetched top dollar because they had been exposed to the extreme conditions of the tropics.

But why import all this wine? Surely it would have been cheaper and easier to make it locally like most other colonial food and beverages. Well, the colonists tried….and tried…and tried. Even Thomas Jefferson, one of the great innovators of his day and a celebrated lover of wine, failed in this task, although not for lack of effort. It turns out that European grapes do not do well in the Americas and tend to wither from disease and pests. Additionally, North America’s few native grapes are ill-suited to making fine wine. It was not until recently in our history as a country that we’ve succeeded in growing hybrid grape varieties that will produce a palatable wine. We had a much better track record of making wine out of pretty much everything else (dandelions, apples, barley, peaches, quince, and any berry they could get their hands on). Seeing as it was unimaginable that our founding fathers go without one of their favorite beverages, both wine and wine bottles ended up making their way across the Atlantic in large quantities.

All of this brings us back to the Washington family wine bottles. Their presence is not a surprise but finding them has us pondering the importance of wine in the colonies, the intricacies of colonial transatlantic trade, and the value of seemingly everyday objects in colonial society. Of course it’s also fun to contemplate all of the libations they may have held over the years until a careless hand shattered them and banished the bottles to the trash midden where they would await discovery by archaeologists two and a half centuries later.